Nike Sportswear presents a special Cortez, celebrating the Year of the Tiger. The highly anticipated Nike design to celebrate Chinese New Year will officially launch on Feb. 10th and 13th respectively. Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, this new shoe draws its inspiration from the Chinese Zodiac the year of the tiger. The Nike Chinese Zodiac New Year series started back to 2002 with the Air Force 1, celebrating the year of the horse. The Year of the Tiger Classic Cortez is the 9th design and the first Cortez shoe adopted in the series. As Nike’s first running shoe, Cortez has been well known for its comfort, lightweight and heritage. For 2010, the year of the tiger, the Nike designers took a new approach to interpreting the tiger. Instead of using the popular yellow stripe print, they used white tiger to reflect its image of power and prestige in Chinese traditional culture.

The shoe will be available in two different packages: A traditional Nike shoebox or a unique shoebox design limited to 200 pairs only. The limited shoebox is designed with the same inspiration to complement the shoe: white box with tiger stripe prints and Chinese character on Chinese trigrams and are embossed on each side of the shoebox. Finally, the five-finger death grip design is used to open the shoebox in true tiger fashion. The Nike Year of the Tiger Classic Cortez will be available on February 10th with limited shoebox package and on 13th with traditional Nike shoebox at select Nike Sportswear stores in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Detailed images of the Nike Sportswear Tiger Classic Cortez follow after the jump.